


Cross'd

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-07
Updated: 2005-10-07
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the witches thwart a romance before it can turn into a tragedy, Nanny Ogg gets an unexpected night out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cross'd

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Starfish

 

 

After the left Genua, but before they'd seen any actual elephants, the three witches stopped for the night. Granny, though neither Nanny Ogg nor Magrat dared say so, was still looking stretched, and besides, as Nanny Ogg cheerfully pointed out, there was no point in rushing away from banananana dakry territory.

There was no inn to be seen, but when they presented themselves at the first place that looked prosperous to be inclined to offer hospitality, they were welcomed with enthusiasm. "Extra guests for the ball tonight!" their host exclaimed, and his pretty daughter rushed to greet them.

"Blessings be on this...estate," said Granny.

"You're magic, aren't you?" the host's pretty daughter gasped, causing Magrat to choke, Granny to roll her eyes, and Nanny Ogg to smile at her with the faintly maternal kindness she reserved for grandchildren and imbeciles.

"Are you the fairies' midwife?" the young woman asked Nanny breathlessly. Nanny regarded her doubtfully.

"Um, sure. That's me," she said. "The, um, fairies' midwife. I'm always attending fairy birthings, me."

"And when maids lie on their backs, you press them and learn them first to bear?" the girl persisted.

"That certainly sounds like her area of expertise," Granny said nastily.

"Esme!" said Nanny, but it was an automatic response, not a real protest. She peered at the girl worriedly, but she'd moved on from fairies.

"I'm Julie," the girl told Magrat happily, as if no more could be asked of life than this. She put her arm around Magrat's waist and enthused, "I just know we're destined to be the best of friends! Let's go walking in the rose garden!"

"That one makes our Magrat sound sensible," said Granny bluntly when they'd left. "I can't be having with this romantical stuff."

"It's so romantic," Julie sighed to Magrat as they made their way through the rose garden.

"Oh, yes," Magrat said politely, and then confusion caught up with her. "Er, what is, exactly?"

"Oh, _everything_ ," Julie sighed. She had a very impressive sigh, causing her chest to rise and fall to a degree that could induce seasickness, although probably not in sailors. Magrat felt suddenly unequipped in the sighing department.

"I'm going to marry a king," she blurted before she could stop herself, and then blushed. "Well, probably," she said. "Almost certainly. Very likely, anyway."

"That's quite romantic," Julie said, managing to convey both approval and slight condescension. "I, alas, shall never be married!" She paused.

Magrat recognized her cue. "How awful," she said, and when this didn't seem to be enough, "Why not?" She was, she thought proudly, already getting the hang of this 'best friends' thing.

"Our families have feuded for generations," Julie sighed. "We aren't allowed to see each other! I've barely ever been able to see him or speak to him. We've arranged to meet tonight at the masked ball, though, to finalize out plans."

"Oh, yes," Magrat said vaguely, thinking that barely seeing or speaking to someone didn't actually sound very romantic at all, when you came to examine it. "Are you going to elope?" she asked absently.

"Oh, we have a _much_ more romantic plan than that," Julie assured her. She leaned closer to Magrat and confided in an excited whisper, "We're going to kill ourselves! Then everyone will be sorry! Isn't that the most romantic thing you ever heard of? Couldn't you just die?"

"No, you silly girl," Magrat thought, shocked, "but you could." Out loud she said, "Um, I'd better get back before the others come looking for me."

"Hmmm," said Nanny Ogg thoughtfully, when Magrat had finished repeating all of that. "Did you get that, Esme? The part about the family feud and all?"

"A plague on both their houses!" Granny snapped. Nanny and Magrat cringed. "I meant that metaphorically," Granny added in irritation. "It's another story, I can tell. More real lives bein' twisted to fit a story. It must be left over from...from all of that." She couldn't, yet, manage to say her sister's name casually. She glowered at Magrat and nanny. "We'll have to put this right," she said. "You said they was finalizin' this at the ball?"

"Yes," said Magrat.

"You do what you can to keep her out of the way, then," Granny said, and eyed Nanny speculatively. "Gytha, do you think you could find her young man on the dance floor and maybe talk some sense into him? Or if not sense, something equally effective?"

"You and I are past out dancing days," Nanny Ogg said, but wistfully.

"Is that so, Gytha Ogg?" said Granny unexpectedly. "The way I sees it, one of us is going to have to interfere with all this romance, and it ain't goin' to be me-you'll be far more convincin'. Besides, you like dances. You'll fit right in."

Nanny glanced down at herself appraisingly. "I don't know about that, Esme," she said. "Night can only mask so much."

"Then I'll have to help it along," Granny said grimly.

Later that night, Nanny Ogg twirled in a borrowed gown. "Ooo," she said appreciatively. She didn't need to look in the mirror; she remembered exactly how her body had looked when it had looked like this. This was her body: the way she remembered it, the way it still looked and felt in dreams, the way, at some very basic level, she had always thought of herself. "Esme," she said happily, enjoying the admiration-grudging in Granny's case, shocked in Magrat's-she could see on their faces, "I never thought I'd be young again."

"You ain't young again," Granny pointed out. "You just looks it."

"I feels it, too," Nanny argued.

"You always feels it," Granny said. "I've never known anyone like you, Gytha, for not feelin' or actin' your age. Mind you behaves," she hesitated. She'd been going to say "properly," but that wasn't what was needed, was it? "Appropriately," she settled on. "And Magrat, keep that young woman distracted long enough for Nanny to talk some sense into her young man."

"That could take an awfully long time," Magrat pointed out. "And what could Nanny possibly say to convince him to go on living, anyway? She doesn't even know him." The other two witches exchanged looks.

"I'm sure she'll think of something," Granny said finally. "The main difficulty will be recognizin' the right young man."

But as it turned out, that part wasn't a problem at all. Nanny Ogg spotted the dazzled, overly-romantical look of mingled idiocy and imagined suicide almost immediately. In her day, she thought with pride, she'd been capable of inducing a similar state herself, although truth be told she'd preferred to induce a state less swoony and more active; no young men had ever killed themselves for Gytha Ogg, but a few had nearly succumbed to death by exhaustion. And then she remembered that this _was_ her day, at least for this one night, and she crossed the floor to the self-doomed lover, pleasantly aware that she was attracting glances of envy or admiration, according to the inclinations of the glancer.

"I'm Gytha," she announced to the slightly panic-stricken young man. He bowed awkwardly.

"Athenio," he introduced himself, nervously, and added, still more nervously, "but I'm already-er-spoken for."

"Oh, that's all right," she said. "I ain't plannin' to interfere with that. I just wanted to talk to you a while."

Athenio allowed himself to be convinced by that and followed her outside-"away from the crowds and the noise," she said smoothly-although if he'd been strictly honest with himself he'd have admitted it wasn't her vocabulary he wanted to see more of. Regardless of what he wanted, though, conversation was what he got, and the increasingly hot and bothered young man, who'd never encountered a vocabulary or a set of anecdotes quite like Gytha Ogg's, was soon enthusiastically agreeing with this strange young woman that life was, indeed, full of possibilities. Yes, indeed. You'd have to be a fool not to stick around and find out what life had to offer. Who could resist the lure of experience?

Eventually, as was inevitable, the eager hand of inexperience made an awkward move towards the bosom of temptation, and was gently but firmly rebuffed. "As a matter of fact, my lad," Nanny Ogg said, overtones of matriarchy still audible even in her clear, young voice, "I think you can safely push along, now. We've been out here all night!"

When the young man, still stammering apologies and blushing scarlet, had finally disappeared, she reckoned smugly that whether or not Magrat had talked any sense into young Julie, there was no fear of a suicide pact now. That, she knew, was a young man fairly dripping, or maybe bursting, with newfound enthusiasm for life. She fanned herself, feeling slightly overheated, but it was all for a good cause. A man who'd tasted of the fruit of the Ogg of knowledge, so to speak, would not soon be convinced to off himself on the whim of some slip of a girl.

And, in fact, Athenio himself, hurrying home along the moonlit path, was rehearsing a number of speeches designed to convince Julie to buck up and hang in there, and moreover to get around the thorny problem of not being allowed to see each other by, perhaps, seeing a largish number of other people. "After all, she'll still have adversity's sweet milk, philosophy," he said aloud, accidentally banging his shoulder against the very much larger shoulder of another gentleman hurrying the opposite way along the path. "My good sir, I am sorry," said Athenio, staring in dismay up at the man who, he realized at second glance, didn't look like a gentleman at all.

Luckily the brigand seemed to take no offence. "Milulk?" he drawled, eyeing Athenio hopefully, and then swaggered off impatiently when none was forthcoming.

Greebo, facing the business end of a broom wielded by a cook made savage with the pressures of catering a masked ball, had shifted form. The upstairs, luckily, had yielded clothes that covered, though nothing could be said to conceal, Greebo-the-man. Now he'd gone out, looking for something to pounce on, and he'd caught a scent that was...well, it was almost familiar. On the one hand, it had associations of food and warmth and unquestioning fondness. But on the other hand, there was something else, something that tugged at him insistently. Greebo strode down the path, not certain who or what he'd find at the end of it, but certain he was going to debauch it thoroughly.

"La, Sir," said Nanny-made-young automatically, and then she looked up and her eyes widened with surprised recognition. "Oh, it's you," she said, but before she could identify herself, much less reduce him to kittenhood by babbling affectionate nonsense, he was on her, and in her, and her howls matched his.

When all was said and done, she hadn't actually resisted, as such. "Thank goodness," she remarked contentedly afterwards, "Granny can't be bothered to talk to cats."

 

 

 


End file.
